Sommaire pour July 2019 de Classic Rock

Ozzy Tour Rescheduled But Special Guests Priest’s rift with KK deepens. OZZY: KEVIN NIXON OZZY OSBOURNE has announced the new dates for his postponed tour of the UK and Ireland, which was to have taken place in January and February but was postponed after the singer, 70, was hospitalised with bronchitis and pneumonia, and then suffered a nasty fall. All previously purchased tickets remain valid for the rescheduled dates, which are: Nottingham Motorpoint Arena January 31, Dublin 3Arena February 1, Manchester Arena 5, Newcastle Utilita Arena 7, London O2 Arena 10, Glasgow The Hydro 12 and Birmingham Resorts World Arena 14. Judas Priest will still appear as Special Guests. In related news, the gulf between Judas Priest and their former guitarist KK Downing grows ever wider. Co-founding member Downing retired…

MY FIRST LOVE The Def Leppard frontman (and discerning glam-rock connoisseur) sings the praises of T. Rex’s second studio album, Electric Warrior, and looks back on his Sanyo stereo days. By Joe Elliot T.Rex ELECTRIC WARRIOR “I had just acquired myself a stereo – a fantastic Sanyo stereo. It was like a suitcase. You’d lift up the lid, the lid split in two and the speakers came off these flexi-hinges. It had a record player, a cassette player and a radio; you could tape off the radio and off records. “My mum and dad had bought me a compilation album of everything on Island Records at the time, so you got a sample of Jethro Tull, Free, Mott The Hoople, Cat Stevens, Jimmy Cliff… So I taped that LP and…

THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS Johnny Kidd & The Pirates Shakin’ All Over Knocked up in a hurry, intended as a B-side and with a title the band were all originally “ashamed of”, it was an instant hit and became one of the great British rock’n’roll records of the early 60s. Words: Rob Hughes It’s a curious fact that some of the most enduring songs were written in a matter of minutes, such as The Beatles’ Yesterday, the Stones’ Satisfaction, Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. Another one is Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ classic from 1960, Shakin’ All Over. Knocked together hastily in a cellar at midnight, it was intended as a throwaway B-side. Instead it became a monster hit and a foundation stone of British rock‘n’roll.…

MOTÖRHEAD READY FOR TAKE-OFF Having just been let out of a Finnish jail, Motörhead returned to England needing to record a follow-up to their hit album Overkill – and fast. Bomber came out all guns blazing, the charts in its sights. Words: Mick Wall CHALKIE DAVIES/GETTY The pressure was on in that overheated summer of 1979. With Motörhead’s second album, Overkill, having just become their first UK Top 30 chart hit, Lemmy should have been skipping around in his dirty white boots. They had even been on Top Of The Pops – twice – and overnight they’d gone from being “the worst band in the world” (copyright NME, 1978) to the coolest rock band on the planet. Well, the coolest rock band in Britain, anyway. But instead of feeling pleased,…

MADE IN 1979 BROUGHT TO YOU BY CLASSIC ROCK ZZ TOP With some top tunes, a vintage clavinet and a battery of effects plastered all over it, it successfully updated ZZ’s old-school blues and pointed the way forward. Words: Henry Yates DEGÜELLO GETTY The popular perception is that ZZ Top morphed as they crossed the boundary line into the 80s. Where once the Texans had been a smooth-chinned, roadhouse-ready little ol’ blues outfit, runs the narrative, now they came with a thicket of facial hair, banks of synthesisers and furry spinning guitars to hypnotise the MTV generation. The truth is a little more transitional, and best encapsulated by Degüello, the thumping sixth album that saluted the Top’s early-70s sound, spiced it with fresh flavours and instruments and began formulating the…

CELEBRATING THEIR 40th Words: Polly Glass Aerosmith NIGHT IN THE RUTS The most wide-reaching, cross-generational picture of Aerosmith tends to stem from their 80s records – and onwards, obviously. It was the 80s, after all, that brought the immortal likes of Dude Looks Like A Lady, Rag Doll and Janie’s Got A Gun. Plus the fact that their sartorial flamboyance and propensity for thinking big fitted in to the age of MTV and filthy-rich record companies. But that snarl, that resoundingly solid-rock foundation of theirs was laid in the 70s. In 1979, Aeromith still had more in common with the vintage likes of the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, and Night In The Ruts was the glorious summation of that, and the rough yet bold, hard-hitting platform that would ultimately…

CHEAP TRICK DREAM POLICE Words:Philip Wilding Following up their career-changing Cheap Trick At Budokan was never going to be much of a problem for Cheap Trick – given that they’d actually recorded the material for Dream Police before their live album was released. “Dream Police was ready to go when Budokan came out,” guitarist Rick Nielsen said. “We held it back because Budokan was so successful.” GETTY X2 Nice problems to have. Dream Police was the band’s fourth studio album in three years. They might have fallen into the 80s as awkwardly as a drunk going through a shop window, but in 1979, buoyed by their massive-selling live album and with Nielsen’s songwriting still as sharp as a tack – it seemed almost inevitable that Dream Police would make bona…

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER Inspired by heavyweight rockers such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, Diamond Head seemed to be poised for major NWOBHM stardom. Yet for all their brilliance – and being befriended by early uber-fan Lars Ulrich – they remained cult favourites. Words: Paul Elliott In the early days of 1982, a letter postmarked ‘California’ arrived at the three-bedroom semi in Stourbridge in the West Midlands where Brian Tatler lived with his parents. Tatler, aged 21, was the guitarist in Diamond Head, rising stars of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, who had cockily proclaimed themselves “the natural successors to Zeppelin”. The letter was from Tatler’s pen pal, an 18-year-old called Lars Ulrich, an aspiring drummer and NWOBHM obsessive, who with his family had recently moved from Denmark…

ROYAL REPUBLIC CHECKOUT WHAT ADAM AND HANNES ENDED UP SHELLING OUT FOR. The Martyn Ford Orchestra – Smoovin “This record just spoke to me,” Grahn says of this orchestral disco tat from 1976. “How many shots did it take for the cover photo? Everything about it is perfect. Look at the angle of her back. I just hoped it would be reflected in the passion she plays with. Then I heard it, and the love was enforced.” Morris Day – Daydreamin’ “The production on these eighties records is astonishing,” Grahn says of this album by the singer of Prince peers The Time. “The programmed bass and brass and guitar are good to steal from. You find really good rhythms, and nobody knows what this shit is.” Spice Girls – Spice…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Duff McKagan Tenderness UMC GN’R bassist dials down the rock and ups the country quotient on second solo release. Duff McKagan was the punk rock kid who ended up in the world’s biggest hair-metal band, but it turns out he had an outlaw heart all along. Tenderness, his first solo album since Guns N’ Roses reunited, and his second after 1993’s Believe In Me, forsakes the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and rock’n’roll in favour of Nashville and rootsy Americana. Okay it isn’t quite a cryin’-at-the-sportsbar country and western album, but its dialled-back ambience, strategically deployed pedal steel guitars and gospel-tinged backing vocals put it in the ballpark. There was always more to the bassist than the Sunset Strip bozo caricature (it’s difficult to imagine Slash…

BUYER’S GUIDE Y&T While they had their ups and downs, in the 80s the American band recorded some albums that have stood the test of time. For Dave Meniketti, the lead singer and lead guitarist with Y&T, there’s one night in the summer of 1982 that he’ll never forget. For an American band inspired by British acts such as Led Zeppelin and The Who, and originally named Yesterday And Today after a Beatles album, it was a thrill to play at London’s famous Marquee club. What Meniketti had not anticipated was the warmth of the welcome that Y&T received there–so warm, in fact, that rubber on a guitar stand melted during the gig. As he recalled to Classic Rock: “I had heat stroke after that show.” The early 80s were…

Good Worth exploring Ten GEFFEN, 1990 It was apt that this album opened with a song named Hard Times. After the failure of 1987’s Contagious, their debut for new label Geffen, the band were in deep shit. Ten was their last shot at the big time. And while it didn’t turn out as they hoped, they at least gave it their best shot. With former Journey drummer Steve Smith playing on most tracks, this was a high-class hard rock record, with shades of Led Zeppelin in the stuttering riff of Hard Times and the acoustic textures in Ten Lovers, and AOR mastery in Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark. But as Dave Meniketti later commented: “Grunge was coming in. The writing was on the wall.” Musically Incorrect MUSIC FOR NATIONS,…

THE HARD STUFF & STUFF BOOKS DVDs Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock ‘N’ Roll Dir: Tom Jones The fall and rise of an iconic area of New York, told by Springsteen, Southside Johnny and others. Part socio-political documentary, part music film, Asbury Park, charts the turbulent backdrop to a small part of the Jersey Shore that helped define rock and soul. It begins with the demarcation of the East and West sides of the city–literally on either side of the tracks: the predominantly black West Side, home to a fabled jazz and blues scene, and to the east the altogether more straightlaced community across town. Somewhere in the middle was the Upstage club, a crammed space that was an early stepping stone for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.…

Steve Hillage All aboard the time machine, and set the controls for the 70s. The veteran guitarist/vocalist and former Gong member previews three shows in celebration of his first four solo albums, released between 1975 and ’78. What inspired you to revisit your Fish Rising, L, Motivation Radio and Green albums? This is something I wanted to do before I get too old and decrepit. But it’s a massive undertaking. We got a good offer to do Shepherd’s Bush Empire, which allowed us to add Manchester and Cambridge. Of all your albums, why revisit those four in particular? Because they’re the main ones, and I want people to know that I’m not doing any new, modern stuff. Having spent six months of preparation I’m really excited by it. Along with…

MADE IN 1979 BROUGHT TO YOU BY CLASSIC ROCK WHITESNAKE To this day, Coverdale and co are still often tagged as an 80s band, but it all began with bluesy hard rock in the 70s. Then along came 1979’s game-changer. Words: Dave Ling LOVEHUNTER The provocatively titled Lovehunter was the second full-length album from Whitesnake, the bluesy hard rockers formed in 1978 by David Coverdale following the dissolution of Deep Purple. The singer had laid the group’s foundation with guitarists Bernie Marsden and Mick Moody, bassist Neil Murray and drummer David ‘Duck’ Dowle before his former Purple partner Jon Lord joined them on keyboards during the recording of their debut album, Trouble, the previous year. Although Trouble had been a promising enough introductory statement, a more consistent set of songs…

SCORPIONS LOVEDRIVE Words:Ken McIntyre Given the ubiquitous daily multi-play of Rock You Like A Hurricane in grocery stores, airports and amateur wrestling matches the world over, we sometimes forget that the Scorpions were at one time both a hungry and decidedly edgy band. They spent a good portion of the 1970s meandering around proggy canyons, but even with the aggressively cosmic guitarist Uli Jon Roth in the band they still managed to tighten up and develop into a storming hard rock band by 1975’s In Trance. A year later they followed that with Virgin Killer, an insanely controversial record thanks to its cover that featured a naked 10-year-old girl. Both of these developments would ultimately dovetail into 1979’s landmark Lovedrive album, their most focused and groundbreaking work of the decade.…

THE NEW LOOK OF THE 80S Words: Ken McIntyre It has been said that Billy Idol invented the 80s. It’s true, he did. The 80s didn’t really kick in until about 1984 but, let’s face it, he had the plastic-fantastic aesthetic – and the cheekbones – to carry an entire decade. That’s not to say the 1970s didn’t have their own look, but it was essentially just more of the same. Long hair and tight leather pants had been pioneered by Jim Morrison in the mid-60s, and everyone just stuck with that for the next 10 years. It was clearly time for a change. The 70s were violent and tumultuous times, pockmarked by a pointless war that was followed by one crisis after another. First a gas crisis, then a…

WILD AT HEART Since the early 90s The Wildhearts have continued to light up the rock world – and been through hell in the process. Now they’re back with their first album in 10 years. And it’s really good. Words: Rob Hughes “We’re like family, you can’t get rid of us,” says Ginger Wildheart, musing on the unlikely and continuing saga of The Wildhearts. “We’ve been through so much together – all the fall-outs and the shit that’s gone on. We shouldn’t even be alive. But listen to the noise that us four fuckers can still make!” “It’s one of those evolving situations,” says guitarist and co-founder CJ. “There have been occasions – and this is true of me and Ginger – when we’ve detested being in this band. Equally,…

By Royal Appointment It was the decade when Queen had it all, lost it and then clawed it back again. But behind the strut and sparkle of the band in the 80s, storm clouds were gathering… Words: Henry Yates For the rock galacticos of the 70s, the transition into a new decade proved a difficult gearshift. By the end of 1980, Led Zeppelin had been sunk by the death of talismanic drummer John Bonham. Unravelling alongside them were The Who, and while the Stones and Pink Floyd continued to play to packed stadia, the crowds increasingly called out for the old songs. In this age of stumbling giants, Queen hit the 80s like a train. Already, the band had kissed off the 70s with their biggest US hit to date,…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Perry Farrell Kind Heaven BMG Jane’s Addiction mainman’s album featuring members of JA, Foo Fighters and The Cars. Jane’s Addiction were a rum group at their late-80s height. They commanded a broad range of devotees; anyone from a Guns N’ Roses fan to a Pixies fan could be into Jane’s Addiction, and very often were. Part of it was down to Perry Farrell’s voice, such a potent, silvery, piercing weapon, so broadly expressive. Now Farrell is back, with his first new material in a decade, on an album co-produced by Farrell and Tony Visconti and featuring appearances from, among others, Dhani Harrison (son of George) Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and the orchestral contributions of Hollywood composer Harry Gregson-Williams. As ever, and in the best sense,…

ROUND-UP: PROG By Jo Kendall Flamingods Levitation MOSHI MOSHI While splitting prog musical atoms with knotty time signatures, coming up with obscure lyrics and spending many hours getting a bedroom tan as you diligently master your musical instrument of choice, it’s also quite nice to make music that’s a bit of fun now and again. London-Bahrain band Flamingods enter their ninth year toiling at the tie-dyed psychedelic coalface with a fourth album. And a breezy, funky prog-psych knockabout it is too, taking in poppy synths, Middle Eastern melodies and Asian disco, bolstered by guest contributions from The Comet Is Coming, Snapped Ankles and Vanishing Twin. Astral Plane is an immediate standout, where the beat is up in a colourful pop-motorik. But then there’s Peaches’ bongo-busting raga to light up a receptive…

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Essential Classics Earthshaker A&M, 1981 If ever an album delivered on the promise of its title, it was this one. Earthshaker was a hard rock tour de force with all the raw power and take-no-prisoners attitude of Montrose’s legendary debut. In a stroke, Y&T went from nobodies to cult heroes. Livewire electricity coursed through songs such as Hurricane, Hungry For Rock, Young And Tough and Squeeze, I Believe In You, a heavy blues, was a showcase for Meniketti’s gritty voice and guitar-hero histrionics, while the atmospheric intro to Rescue Me, an epic track described by Meniketti as “the most popular song on the record, if not of our career”, was the inspiration for Metallica’s Fade To Black. GEORGE BODNAR ARCHIVE/ICONICPIX Black Tiger A&M, 1982 After the all-important breakthrough with Earthshaker,…

Avoid Contagious GEFFEN, 1987 When Y&T signed to rock powerhouse Geffen Records, they thought they had it made. They were wrong. In the same week that Contagious was released, the label also issued Whitesnake’s 1987 and Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction. As a result, Contagious got lost in the shuffle. But in truth it was a pretty lame record, a cynical attempt at emulating the big rock acts of the period; its title track was a Bon Jovi knock-off, shiny pop metal complete with the obligatory ‘whoah-oh’ chorus, while the big ballad, Temptation, sounded like a poor man’s Def Leppard. Contagious duly bombed. From such a great band, this was nowhere near good enough.…

LIVE! Stone Temple Pilots On tour and at Download, expect some never-played-live-before songs as well as hits. “The fans seem very appreciative of hearing different songs, and Jeff succeeds in making them his own.” Now fronted by the former reality TV star Jeff Gutt following Scott Weiland’s death in 2015 and the exit of Chester Bennington (who returned to Linkin Park before taking his own life two years ago), Stone Temple Pilots are a tough band to stop. Bassist Robert DeLeo previews the band’s appearance at Download and two indoor warm-up shows. Along with your guitarist brother Dean and drummer Erik Kretz, you’ve started STP from scratch three times, twice in heartbreaking circumstance. Why such unswerving faith? The bond between my brother and I is pretty important. But personally speaking…

LIVE! Midnight Oil With a reunion tour now behind them, a new album is in the pipeline. “Our song Beds Are Burning is keeping us in Vegemite.” Frontman Peter Garrett, who quit music for 15 years to become a minister in the Australian Government, discusses the rejuvenation of his band. The press release for these shows calls Midnight Oil “legendary Australian rock band and agitators”–we like that. We wear that term like a badge of honour. I sometimes think the education comes first and the music afterwards. We can’t help ourselves. How would you sum up the era of your life in public office? Oh gee, I think I’m still in recovery. Some good things were done but it was a needlessly adversarial journey. I have no regrets, but in…

LIVE! Mott The Hoople ’74 / Tax The Heat London Shepherd’s Bush Empire All aboard for fun-time. ★’Surreal’ is the word that keeps coming back when trying to describe the first of Mott The Hoople’s two packed-out appearances at Shepherd’s Bush Empire; closely rivalled by fun. It’s surreal in 2019 to be sitting in this venerable venue as a veteran of the Mott trenches half a century after they were birthed as the speed-child of Guy Stevens, predominantly surrounded by over-50s blokes mouthing every word and vocal interjection. It’s even more surreal seeing Ariel Bender, once auburn-tressed rock god of the power chord, manifesting like a hyperactive leprechaun in leopard-skin tights, scarves, fluorescent-buckled dance pumps and red beret, growing old disgracefully by inventing a new species of bonkers over-70s guitar…

NEWS Who says rock is dead? Heavy metal was the fastest-growing genre of 2018, according to figures compiled by the independent digital music distribution, publishing, and licensing service TuneCore, who cover some 250,000 artists. The total amount generated from streams and downloads of music by metal artists in 2018 was $199.3 billion (£153 billion) – an increase of 83% from the previous year. Brian May has said he hopes that climate change could prompt another charity concert in the style of Live Aid. Queen were among the stars of the latter in 1985 (see feature on p74), and the guitarist believes that demand from fans could lead to a similar event. “It would take the younger generation to take the bull by the horns,” he tells the Mirror. “We [Queen]…

HIGH HOPES Sweet Crisis They’ve got big names to drop, and with a debut album due in October their future looks bright. “That blues-soul thing with dirty guitar tones, minimally played, that’s our palette.” SWEET CRISIS HAVE friends in high places. There was the time when an incognito Peter Green watched their sound-check (“Apparently he told our manager that he loved us,” beams guitarist Piers Mortimer). And the time when frontman Leo Robarts blagged his way backstage at a Queen show to meet Paul Rodgers (“I just started singing Free songs a-capella, and he joined in”). And let’s not forget Mortimer’s brush with Robert Plant at a urinal. “There’s this guy in a Rasta beanie, and he went: ‘Killer set.’ I look over, and it’s Robert Plant, for fuck’s sake!…

RAW POWER There’s A Storm Comin’ Experimental is as experimental does. Meet the new signature guitar of the wonderfully eclectic Devin Townsend. DEVIN TOWNSEND IS a wonderful guitar player and has brought out a couple of signature guitars over the years, most notably a V-shaped Peavey seven-string baritone that resembled some sort of medieval weapon. Now he’s thrown in his lot with German makers Framus, who’ve introduced this, the Masterbuilt Stormbender Devin Townsend. The guitar boasts a pair of revolutionary pickups, designed specifically to allow Devin to play around with a number of different tonal bases without having to switch guitars. Dubbed Fluence Transcendence humbuckers, they’re made by Fishman, a company well versed in providing high-end pickups and transducers for all manner of acoustic and electric instruments. It’s a little…

HIGH HOPES Little Triggers Liverpool’s hottest new export on opening for Iggy Pop and sleeping in, erm, horse boxes. JOHN LATHAM/PRESS “It’s important to look like a band. We try to look like we’d be in the bookies in the seventies.” TOM HAMILTON’S STYLE icons aren’t those of a typical Gen Z kid. “Lee Brilleaux in Dr Feelgood, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters was dead sharp, Chuck Berry’s always pretty cool…” the 22-year-old singer muses in deadpan Northerner tones. “Steve Marriott’s cool, Marc Bolan obviously [gestures to his own cloud of dark curls]. It’s important to look like a band. We try to look like we’d be in the bookies in the seventies.” More importantly, he and his compadres have the songs to back up the style. Occupying a buzzy, sugar-pumped…

6 Things You Need To Know About Hollis Brown So who are these New Yorkers making a blood-spattered journey from the garage to the stars? Interview: Henry Yates SHERVIN LAINEZ/PRESS NEW YORK SURE spits’em out. The city has been a breeding ground for a thousand bands that matter. And when a green young combo by the name of Hollis Brown took the stage at Don Hill’s bar in Greenwich Village a decade ago, all five punters in attendance surely predicted great things for them. Singer Mike Montali says that since that first show they’ve been through the rough and the smooth. But with the soul-rock R&B of third album Ozone Park they’re finally catching up with the giants in their record collection. They were born in a garage. Rewind to…

FOREIGNER HEAD GAMES Words: Paul Elliott They got off to a flying start. When British guitarist Mick Jones put Foreigner together in New York City in 1976, he knew exactly what he was doing. With an Anglo-American line-up, including singer Lou Gramm, from Rochester, 250 miles from New York, having a rich, soulful voice reminiscent of Paul Rodgers, this was a hard rock band made for radio. Their debut album, titled simply Foreigner, released in 1977, sold four million copies in the US. The following year’s Double Vision did a million more. Foreigner even found an unlikely fan in John Lydon, the former Sex Pistols singer, who said that Hot Blooded, the muscular hit from Double Vision, made him “jump around like a lunatic”. But still, there was something needling…

Flashback Records Islington, London THE £50 RECORD STORE CHALLENGE Royal Republic Words: Nick Hasted Portraits: Will Ireland Passers-by keep a respectful distance as one leather-jacketed Swedish rock musician boots another in the balls. Royal Republic’s singer Adam Grahn incrementally increases the impact on guitarist Hannes Irengård’s nether regions as Classic Rock’s photographer shoots away, Grahn’s sheer enthusiasm for the task putting their scheduled morning’s record-shopping with £50 of our cash momentarily at risk. Injury averted, the duo descend into the vinylfilled basement of north London’s Flashback Records, where they display similar recklessness, trampling every rule of rock taste as they rummage the racks for a unique selection, in which Kurt Cobain and Ginger Spice both figure. Flashback’s small, packed basement is divided into myriad categories, and the tall, moustachioed Grahn heads…

“Live Aid was the perfect stage for Freddie” How the event didn’t just resurrect Queen’s ailing career, but also propelled them to new heights. The 17 minutes Queen spent on stage at Wembley Stadium during their Live Aid performance on July 13, 1985 were 17 minutes which would both make rock history and transform the band for good. Although the band had enjoyed continued success with their platinum-selling eleventh album, February 1984’s The Works, as the mid-80s progressed Freddie Mercury found himself disillusioned and searching for something new. “We were all forming a sort of a rut,” Mercury said at the time. “I wanted to get out of this last 10 years of what we were doing. It was so routine. It was like, go to the studio, do an…

ROUND-UP: SLEAZE By Sleazegrinder Glitter Wizard Opera Villains HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS These days we equate concept records with stuffy prog types, but the first (and best) ones were made by drug-crazed freaks with no sense of moderation. And while I’m not saying Opera Villains is the SF Sorrow of the Trump era, I am saying it’s at least its Jesus Christ Superstar. California’s Glitter Wizard began by ripping off the Stooges, but over time they’ve developed into this majestic pigpile of sonic excess, a towering cathedral of fuzz and scuzz, a kind of Deep Purple-meets-Gong-meets-Sabbath-meets-dollar-store occultism gang-bang wrapped into a lysergic burrito of blistering rock’n’roll. Opera Villains throws in more head-spinning surprises than I can ever catalogue here, but I will say that the vampire Jim Steinman piano ballad Rats particularly…

THE HARD STUFF ALBUMS Stray Cats 40 SURFDOG No midlife crisis for the reunited rockabilly kingpins. There’s a glorious denial of passing time about the Stray Cats. Oblivious to fashion, impervious to zeitgeist, the New York rockabilly trio operate in such a bulletproof cultural bubble that humanity could be living on Mars with bionic eyes and the band would still be skittering through songs about hot rods, jukeboxes and duck’s-arse quiffs. Even for a band that pays little attention to clock and calendar, it’s something to celebrate that founder members Brian Setzer (guitar/vocals), Lee Rocker (upright bass) and Slim Jim Phantom (drums) are alive and operational four decades after forming in Long Island and ram-raiding the British rock scene. And their new album, 40, isn’t about to spoil the anniversary…

Superior Reputation cementing Struck Down LONDON, 1978 With their first two albums, both issued in the late 70s under the name Yesterday And Today, the band couldn’t buy a hit. But in the self-titled debut, from 1976, there were signs of what was to come, most evident in the fast, hard-driving Earthshaker. And in the follow-up, Struck Down, there was more muscular rock and also a greater sense of ambition. The title track was a mighty slow-burner, like a heavier Free. On a grander scale were two tracks with echoes of Dio-era Rainbow: Dreams Of Egypt, an overblown historical epic, and Stargazer (Round And Round), with psychedelic vibes the prelude to flat-out heavy metal thunder. Mean Streak A&M, 1983 In a year when Def Leppard’s Pyromania and ZZ Top’s Eliminator…

INTERVIEWS Marcus King Band Look out for them on tour and at festivals this summer. As you’d expect of an artist mentored by Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, Deep South-born Marcus King is a rather special musician. Still touring his band’s revealing Carolina Confessions album released last year, the guitarist/vocalist plays more UK dates this month. Carolina Confessions, your third album, which Classic Rock described as “a classy fusion of brassy soul, blues and velvety southern rock”, has been widely praised. Was it criticised anywhere? I have a good team around me, and if there were bad reviews then they hid them from me [laughs]. Overall, though, I’m immensely gratified that people really seem to dig the record. According to your press biography its central theme is that “none of…

Jonny Lang Rockin’ The Blues is back with a bang, says the guitarist. MIDNIGHT OIL: JOHN TSIAVIS/PRESS; JONNY LANG: DANIELLA HOVSEPIAN/PRESS Following the success of 2018’s inaugural package event that starred Mascot Records artists Eric Gales, Quinn Sullivan, Gary Hoey and Lance Lopez, the Grammy-winning American blues guitarist previews Rockin’ The Blues 2.0. Presumably you think that pulling together like-minded artists into one value-for-money package is a great idea? Definitely. For people who like blues and rock, it’s going to be really cool night out. How well do you know your co-stars Walter Trout and Kris Barras? I got to hang out with Walter and we did a show together, but I’m not that familiar with Kris so I’m looking forward to changing that. Given his brush with the grim…